This Biography Stands as Tall as Lincoln Himself Confidence, Morality, and Grace Shaped the 16th American President

Article excerpt

THIS is a masterwork. It stands alone among 135 years of Lincoln
biographies. Its author, David Herbert Donald, has spent much of a
lifetime studying and teaching the Civil War era and its central
figure. Along the way, among other honors, he won two Pulitzer
Prizes for biography. Now he has created his masterpiece.

The popular magazine "Civil War Times" has devoted its December
issue to the war president. It indulged in a difficult game by
asking its own contributors to select and rank the 10 best books
among the 7,000 or so written. Donald's biography came in second -
after Lincoln's own writings.

There has been no major biography quite like this: It is chiefly
written from Lincoln's perspective. Information and ideas available
to him, rather than to later historians, form its principal source
- together with Lincoln's own words, and those of his
contemporaries. For example, Lincoln may have devoted great
energies to what modern historians see as the transformation of the
United States into a developing, market-oriented society. But
Donald largely provides a picture of a politician making deals
about banks or railroads.

Similarly, the Battle of Gettysburg may have been a turning
point of the war, but "Lincoln" devotes only two pages to it,
mostly to the commander-in-chief's emotional reactions. After all,
he did not witness the battle.

Donald is quite aware of the portrait he has drawn. "It is
perhaps a bit more grainy than most, with more attention to his
{Lincoln's} unquenchable ambition, to his brain-numbing labor in
his law practice, to his tempestuous married life, and to his
repeated defeats. It suggests how often chance, or accident played
a determining role in shaping his life," he says in the book. In
short, among recent bestsellers, Donald's work is a counterpoint to
Garry Wills's "Lincoln at Gettysburg," which presented a man who
transformed America with a brief speech.

Donald's "Lincoln" is fully believable. Is it also right? That
will be debated for many years to come. As with so much that towers
and shines in life, strengths can also be weaknesses. By focusing
so fully on Lincoln, what he knew and when, the larger historical
context at times disappears into obscurity. By highlighting the
pragmatic politician Donald makes Lincoln appear more parochial
than he was, and the 16th president's ideas and strong moral
convictions fade. This becomes specially questionable when the book
considers slavery and race. I have just completed work on the
"Columbia Dictionary of Lincoln Quotations" and am struck that some
of the best of Lincoln's words found no place in a 600-page book. …